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Institutions & Practices

UNDERSTANDING HOW CARCERALISM OPERATES

137 posts in ‘Institutions & Practices’

In Depth

Follow the Science

Federal law enforcement has long called the shots in the field of drug scheduling. But in the case of fentanyl analogues, Congress has a chance to lead — by doing…

Patricia Richman & Diane Goldstein

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Life Inside

‘We Are Men’

On the 50th anniversary of a flashpoint of the American penal system, the cries of Attica still resonate today.

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system actors

Resistance Is Futile

In ways large and small, defendants who try to assert their voice in the criminal legal system see their agency denied — including, sometimes, by their own lawyers.

Matthew Clair

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book review

Trials Without Justice

Plea bargaining may be a bad deal overall. But for many Black and Brown defendants, is the alternative any better?

Daniel Harawa

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interventions

Decarcerate Rikers Now

Nothing short of immediately getting people out of New York City's jail complex, and keeping others from going in, will prevent the death and horror now ravaging it.

Jessica González-Rojas

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A closer look

Cracking the Black Box

One way to keep prosecutors accountable and check their carceral impulses is by shedding some light on their vast discretion to charge crimes.

Shima Baradaran Baughman, Christopher T. Robertson & Megan S. Wright

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excerpt

Fear of the Black Child

American society and its criminal legal system simply won’t let Black kids be kids

Kristin Henning

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Life Inside

Learning and Liberation

One year after a governor's clemency, Renaldo Hudson, who spent 37 years incarcerated, reflects on violence, prisons, and the vital importance of education and support for those incarcerated.

Renaldo Hudson

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Institutions

Maxed Out

Long a reflection of the American carceral system’s worst excesses, the supermax prison serves no just purpose and must cease to exist.

Schuyler Daum

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Institutions

Making Penal Bureaucrats

Now more than ever, legal education must come to grips with its role in shaping the minds of those who might help to dismantle — or strengthen — carceral institutions…

Shaun Ossei-Owusu

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Institutions

A Most Carceral Friend

The Justice Department’s top Supreme Court lawyer is far more committed to helping prosecutors win convictions and keep people locked up than to ‘doing justice.

Darcy Covert & A.J. Wang

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Big Data

The Feature Is the Bug

For all the criticism they get, algorithms can be unlikely allies in exposing deep, structural injustices that entrench mass incarceration.

Colin Doyle

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Sentencing

Unfinished Business

Reckoning with the lives of all the men I sent to prison is a necessary, though not sufficient, step to reckon with the untold harm of mass incarceration.

Nancy Gertner

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Surveillance

The Case Against E-carceration

Electronic monitoring is not an alternative to incarceration. It's an alternative form of incarceration.

James Kilgore, Emmett Sanders & Kate Weisburd

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In the States

A ‘Warm’ Closure

The state of Washington plans to close 18 prison units. It sounds like progress. But don't be fooled: It's a problem.

Tomas Keen

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Institutions

Where Reform Goes to Die

In its first six months, the Biden Administration has delivered major criminal justice disappointments. The problem: DOJ is calling the shots.

Rachel Barkow & Mark Osler

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Decarceral Pathways

The Entrenched Carceralism of Forensics

Forensic science is not an instrument of accuracy or truth. It is a tool of the carceral state that cannot continue to exist in its current form.

Maneka Sinha

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